My legs shivered, feet appeared to slip; I feared the glass would break.

But something written on the wall to my left in big, bold letters The glass floor can withstand the weight of 14 large hippos redbull-ed my legs. But tragedies happen – went the thought in my head – that a dozen-plus hippos might not be heavy after all. My palms were moist.

It was sunny that morning, but Toronto trembled in the treacherous December chill outside. The observation deck of CN Tower, with this straight down view, could terrify even those (at least for a few seconds) without acrophobia, as they stand afloat 1,122 ft over the ground.

Still standing, I braved the baby steps, while children laughed as they jumped and ran on the glass ground. I stepped to a side, squatted, and placed a hand on the glass, facing the camera. The sweat on my palm vanished, leaving cold trails on the glass.

Don’t you worry, you are safe: 256 square feet of solid glass – five times stronger than the standard required weight – should be the (f)actual thought in your head.

Heavy alloys set on descent, no bumps, nor dent, yet And without the knowledge, nobody sat on the edge Only a few minutes before, did he try to smash the door Only a few seconds ago, made their cries echo Then the silence——the crashing silence.

What’s in the mind of someone who wants to commit suicide?

End life, plain and simple.

But the decision to kill oneself doesn’t come overnight. It may take days or months or years before the fear of pain that results from death is gone — before one is like a log of wood, numbed to the senses. These determined ones may have overcome their pain thresholds by sheer mental prowess. They may have stopped thinking about pain, and have lived a belief that the lifeless aftermath is a beautiful escape.

We have long heard two types of suicide:

1) Those who commit it in the privacy of their room – by hanging, poisoning, etc. – where they may or may not blame others for their voluntary action.

2) Those who commit it in their obsession with an ideology: the suicide bombers brave death’s brutal assault, taking a number of people along with them.

The Germanwings plane crash tells us about a different kind of suicide: one that is voluntary, leading to mass murder (of 149 other souls), and it hasn’t been terrorism.

The co-pilot wanted to destroy the aircraft. He manually changed the autopilot settings – and waited – for the descent. The captain who was locked out of the cockpit kept hitting the door. The co-pilot was relaxed, as the plane descended at 700 kph.

Though I understand he was mentally ill and there rests the case, I’ve been asking myself these questions:

1. Did he think that if he crashed the plane the way he did, the pain of death wouldn’t be as excruciating, and more people would share his experience?

2. Was he ready to die? His peers and others said he was a nice man. The airlines stated he was 100% fit to fly. He also lived with his parents, and ran marathons. But the documents recovered at his apartment included a doctor’s letter, which said he wasn’t fit to work. He loved French Alps.

3. Was that, after all, a painless death? Since the descent was perhaps smooth, no passenger probably thought they had only seconds of life left. It was instantaneous, a beautiful escape into the unknown?

For the Day 5 of my B/W Photo Challenge, I wish to present the proof that I am a proud father, and a proud uncle.

My brother and I are two kids in our family. The elder in the pictures is his son and the younger, mine. Both were born – 5 years and 7 seas apart – on the same day (Indian Standard Time), April 20/21. Why they are “the Bond of Brothers.”

Clouds may gather, dusk may approach, people may whisper — the Empire stays true to its name.

For the Day 4 of my B/W Photo Challenge, I show you the 360-degree views from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I have previously posted pictures of the Empire State, but these ones are from atop the structure.

We seek moments of happiness in the sea of structures. We can be in or among the concrete, but can’t become one, can’t become numb.

For the Day 3 of my B/W Photo Challenge, I present to you the Yacht man. I took these pictures in the evening, from the living room of our apartment.

He’s up on the mast, probably repairing the halyard. But when I was clicking him, I wondered as to what he had for lunch, if he’d fought with his family that morning, and strangely, if he would add coke or soda to vodka.

I don’t think he’s checking his mobile here. But he may want to, considering the altitude might give him a good reception.

Here he’s clearly trying to pull a tool out of his repair bag, but first he’ll have to find it.

The work has begun, and he’s peering in the direction of Brooklyn.

Is someone calling him from below, or is he gauging the altitude? “Would I survive if I fall – and if I do – what would I be left with?”

He has a good view of downtown Manhattan. The Hudson River traffic will be at its peak, as dusk approaches.

That’s the full view of the yacht and the man. Quite a way up.

A wider view.

The widest view the camera could capture. Can you spot the yacht man?

This is the most zoomed-out click. The camera had it enough, and he looks tired, too.

It turned out, by the end of it all, that I had forgotten to eat lunch, had fought with family in the morning, and I would add coke or soda to vodka when I drink (socially).

I link Blewbird for this challenge. This blog has several breathtaking pictures. Please visit.

This is my B/W post for Day 1 of the 5 Day photo challenge. The wonderful Prior linked me for this challenge.

We all know what happened in Massachusetts when it topped 100 inches of snow in a record breaking winter. Contrary to what the weathermen had predicted, New York, New Jersey and some other states in the East Coast were spared the assault.

Though it’s been snowing in NY and NJ intermittently, last week, snow fell for two consecutive days, showing more purpose.

Five pics from those days:

This gull was perched comfortably on a snow-kissed railing. If you look into its eyes, there’s purpose without a purpose. Now that’s a bit of contradiction. Let me explain: (I felt) they live a purposeless life, but to be purposeless they have to be purposeful. They could be the spiritual guru of the birds fraternity. (My header is this bird without some of the crop).

If bicycle were a man, he would tell the snow to leave him alone, and attack a Mercedes instead. “Spare me,” the bicycle said.

These are not my footsteps, they could’ve been mine. But I followed them, as some followed mine.

A bed of crystals, upside down, will grace the gravity.

“Whose car is it?” “It’s mine.” “What will you do about it?” “What will you?” “Nothing.” “Nothing.”

I link the fascinating Kim Gosselin for this challenge, considering she is a lovely photographer, too.

Sam and Ron just finished their dinner. Ron was doing dishes when the phone rang. Sam picked the call.

“Hey Mendes, long time. Where’s Ian?” Sam said. His face gleamed as though he wanted to laugh. He listened to the caller, but the glint in his eyes suggested his mind was elsewhere. “Alright then, let’s meet up next week. Bye.”

“Who’s that?” Ron said, screaming over the sound of the sink water.

“I must tell you this.”

Sam and Ron were roommates for over a year, living in a dingy studio apartment in Journal Square. Both were similar in many ways, the two striking parallels being their short statures and skinny figures. But it was impossible to tickle Ron’s funny bone. And Sam wouldn’t give up.

“Go ahead,” Ron said, as he dried his hands on a towel he carried from the kitchen.

“They are my old buddies, Mendes and Ian. Twins. Will be in Newark for a week.”

“What’s in it to laugh?”

“Well, the last time the three of us met, we were in a park.”

People had begun to crowd the park, the green was bright, the afternoon had basked in the autumn sun. Mendes, Ian and Sam had sat on an old, rickety bench; the only one in the park. Sam had sat in the middle, and the twins, who’d each weighed 300 pounds, were on either side.

The wooden bench – which battled 720 pounds already, including Sam’s 120 – had been enduring the extra burden of the trio’s coarse talk. In fact, whenever the three met there, they’d go on some trance, and would offend not only one another, but those who happened to be around. And there were baby boomers, who’d come to the park to spend some minutes of tranquility, which they were entitled to, after paying taxes all their lives.

The trio had bet a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and the challenge was, who would nudge which two off of the bench and be the last man sitting. The losers would buy the Pounder and serve it to the beaming winner on the bench.

The brothers winked at each other over Sam’s scrawniness, deciding to push him off, after which the contest would be in-house. But Sam sat like a bone, reluctant to be a mere paste these giants would squeeze off a tube. But he could only draw on his remaining strength. The dissonance of their struggle had forced a few boomers off the park. Then Sam fell, his knees hit the ground first, a humiliating defeat he had expected.

He gathered himself, and turned around to check who won the Pounder. But what he saw soothed his ego. The bench was a crushed ruin; its legs buried under the two plus-size men who lay in a heap, entangled in a way that from a distance they’d look nicely positioned and adequately cushioned, like a bench.

“Look at you both.” Sam held his mouth, not keen to bare his teeth. The twins grinned back, but it interspersed with the moans of their aches. They heard soft footsteps approaching them.

When Sam glanced at Ron in the apartment, his face looked stiff.

“Mendes and Ian were big, man,” Sam said, hoping a reaction from his roommate.

Ron threw his towel on a chair, and said, “Who disentangled them?”

“The boomers — but not before they had their due revenge, by pulling the twins’ ears and banging their heads against each other.”

“They spared you?”

“I ran.”

“So when the twins nudged you off the bench, were you like a pin leaving monstrous hands.”

“You or I would have been that pin.”

“There’s no humor in your story,” Ron said, then leaned forward. “Did you buy the Pounder after all?”

“There was no winner. Story ends. Now, no more Mendes-Ian with you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sleepy.”

“Not fair.”

“Whatever.”

Ron’s stiffness began to peel off his face. “I see humor when you let up,” he said, and laughed.

Then their laughter filled the room. They shared a bed that shook when their he-haws curled their bodies, tightened their muscles, and stretched their mouths, so much — their laughter lost its sound, to the involuntary holding of their breaths.

I usually take the stairs from our sixth floor apartment to go to the first floor. I like the walk down in the morning, and up back to the apartment in the evening. It’s healthy. But what is not is the smell of the cigarette smoke in the stairwell.

Cigarette smoke smells different outside, as air slices its thickness off, splintering them in various directions. Smoke is injurious, thick or thin, so most public parks are now no-smoking zones. But when you smoke in a corridor of a closed structure, the thick white stays, and can travel up and down through a stairwell.

We’ve seen No Smoking written in faint red on the grainy walls of the stairwells, on each floor, of the high rise building. The illegibility may have been the invalid excuse for the smokers who have long taken their drags there. Then a time came when the building management issued a warning, a print out, which said: Itis not permitted to smoke in the stairwells. Aprint out pasted on each floor. 36 floors. 4 stairwells.

Permission? Reveler tenants continued to smoke, though the warning was much legible.

Nobody has probably been able to catch these smokers red-handed. How, is a question. None knows their smoking schedule, and the odor lingers after the smoker has long left for his abode. Why don’t they smoke in their abode? They love their family to death.

Last month, the management issued another warning, a print out, which said: It is ILLEGAL to smoke in the building.

ILLEGAL. Yes, in caps. Severe warning it is – so two print outs for each floor.

The word illegal worked. Yay!!! Smokers after all were law abiding tenants otherwise. Soon the smoking zone outside the front lobby swelled. There was no smell in the vertical shaft, for a fortnight.

This morning the odor was pungent in the stairwell. I slowed my steps down, each foot soft and investigative in its motion. I reached the first floor. I saw him.

He was in the corridor, his back facing me. A cigarette was burning between his fingers, and the strong wind outside hurried the smoke in.

He had opened an emergency door — wonder why no alarm sounded, would have alerted the doorman — and had his right foot in as a door blocker. Fahrenheit was negative, and he was wearing a t-shirt. He’d come prepared to smoke in the corridor.

“Sir, the stairwell is filled with your smoke,” I said.

He turned around, his raised brows made his eyes bigger, his foot unmoved. “Really? But I’m smoking outside.”

“Are you? The wind’s moving in.”

“But my puff is going out.”

“Sir, I live on the sixth. I could smell your puffs there.”

He took two steps out, still holding the door. The corridor – chillier than before – continued to suck the smoke in. “Look, I’m outside now.”

“Are you? Thanks a lot.”

The last I glimpsed him, he had an awkward posture: right hand on the door, left fingers and the fag in shivering rhythm, both feet tap dancing as he fought the chill, his t-shirt ballooning behind him.

The weather was punishing, and for all his hard work, he was still breaking the law.